Succubus in the City (10 page)

The experience had traumatized her horribly. PTSD would be today’s diagnosis, and she would probably do well to see a therapist. Only how could she tell a therapist that she really had lived for almost two thousand years and had been perfectly happy until her arrest by Cromwell’s men? Sybil had been one of the last Oracles in Delphi, one of the few truly gifted. She had been recruited, as I had been, from the ranks of the pagan priestesshood to a calling not too different from the one she had held. Only this one delivered immortality, and more magical power than we ever could have wielded as mortals.

Desi might be a closer friend and more emotionally in sync with me, but Sybil and I shared a parallel history.

But Satan did not reassure her immediately. Instead, the Prince of Darkness hesitated and patted Sybil’s hand. “They are certainly not the same Burning Men,” Satan said finally. “And whatever comes, I will protect you. Be assured that I shall always do my best for you. As I would have done then.”

And I knew then that I had not been the only one to try to help Sybil back in the bad old days, and surely Satan was stronger than I. But done was done and nothing could be changed now. Not even with all the power at Her command could Satan change the past.

“If it comes down to it, we can always call in Admin,” Satan reminded us.

“Move?” Eros asked, aghast.

“There are worse things than relocating to London or Paris or Rio,” Satan said. “And everything would be taken care of, as always.”

I didn’t want to move.

Not that Admin didn’t take care of us here, too. Wherever we are assigned, Admin fixes all the details, like birth certificates and passports and leases and memories. They make sure that all of us speak the current language like a native (only we don’t forget languages we use regularly, so I still have decent French, Italian, and Spanish. My Chinese has improved since coming to New York, too, since I try to pick up a newspaper in Mandarin every few weeks or so. My Russian has suffered badly, though it’s still serviceable if I listen hard enough. Everything else is gone except my native tongue. I still dream in Akkadian, and keep my diary in cuneiform. Partly it’s because no one else could read it, but mostly to keep in touch with my past. I don’t want to forget who I am, that I was once a royal, if very minor, princess and priestess. I don’t want to forget that I was mortal).

Admin takes care of all the necessities, like making sure we can keep our leases and that no one around us realizes that I’ve been living in this apartment for twenty years and I don’t look any older.

Satan has to apply to Admin for services on our behalf, since we share services with Heaven and they sometimes outrank us. Which is one reason She hates applying to Admin for special services. Besides which, Admin charges outrageous fees for emergency rush. Expensive, and Satan finds it just a touch humiliating, which is very hard for Her. Satan’s central sin is pride, after all.

Sometimes being the Prince of Hell is really hard on Her and we can only admire the way She manages. Poor Satan. Poor Martha.

“Well,” Satan mused. She certainly didn’t want to go beg Admin for four full reorientations.

“If we could have one research librarian with Akashic credentials, we might be able to track them down without going through Admin,” I mused aloud, wondering what the Akashic record would turn up about one far too frighteningly attractive fake PI.

Satan raised an eyebrow. “Excellent idea, my dear. That we can do immediately through our own organization—no need to notify the Angelic Council about a little research. You, my Lilith, have earned my approval today. I give you the gift of one boon.”

Eros blinked. Even Desi whistled through her teeth. Satan almost never gives boons. I was so stunned that I couldn’t move, not even to pick up my drink. Me? A boon? It was a blank check, a get-out-of-jail-free card. I could ask at any time in the future for anything, anything at all. Well, almost anything. I was still bound by my original contract for my soul. But aside from that, Satan was honor bound to grant my request.

Satan pulled out Her Treo and tapped out an e-mail. “There,” She said. “Since this was your idea, Lily, I have put a demon under you, reporting to you directly. You will be responsible for the Akashic research. Eros, you will be in charge of the central investigation as to who these people are, who their leader is, and how they are funded. Desire, you are too close to matters now, but when you are feeling stronger I expect you to lend a hand.”

“Of course, Martha,” Desi agreed. “I would be ready to help out today, if only to get back at that Steve guy for leaving me in Brooklyn.” Her voice went up on that last word.

“And me?” Sybil asked.

Martha patted her hand. “You’ve had a bad time with these types. I don’t want you involved for now. If you get any prophecy that could be useful, call Eros. Otherwise I would prefer if you stay away from the threat.”

Sybil looked at her napkin and I thought she seemed a bit ashamed.

“Come girls, we’ve beaten them before and we’ll do it again. And we’ll start our investigation tonight. So now, dessert,” Satan ordered.

One does not disobey the Prince of Hell, so I paid careful attention to my lingonberry crème brûlée, along with bites of Desi’s Arctic Circle dessert (made with blueberry sorbet and passion fruit curd), which Martha had declared a medicinal necessity. Seratonin levels and all that. And Satan ordered ice wine all around for all of us, sweet and cool and just the right bit of alcoholic tinge to the very scary evening.

chapter
TEN

It wasn’t until I got home and signed on to MagicMirror that I realized that I’d gotten a new job. Along with being a succubus and an accessories editor, I was now the head of a research team. Great. It’s a good thing that I had a decent education when I was mortal—or what passed as an elite education back in Babylon, though at the time even the Dewey decimal system and microfiche were beyond imagination, let alone Internet search engines. I started to hope that our assigned demon would be as good with them as with the Akashic record.

My laptop was sitting on the coffee table where I’d left it that morning. I threw my coat on the floor next to the sofa, reached over and booted up. As I waited for the programs to check that they had all their parts I ran my palms over the gold and rose silk upholstery and studied the walls. But I still liked my deep bronze paint and architectural white moldings.

Being good, I checked the e-mail left for me at my MagicMirror dump, which was different from my work or personal e-mail addresses. Nice touch of Satan’s, to have my new minion get in touch with me here and leaving it up to me whether or not I should give out other personal methods of communication. And, indeed, there was already a message in my in-box bearing the Akashic ISP address.

Lilith Ad-Hzar, Princess of Babylon, Priestess of Ishtar, servant of Hell
, was the first line of the e-mail. I had to admit that I liked the style. Obviously this demon, in the hour it had taken me to consume my dessert, hug my friends, and get into a taxi uptown, had already done a good solid search on me.

I am the Librarian Azoked, assigned to assist your investigation. Let me say first that it has been my privilege to serve Satan with my specialized abilities and training for two thousand years. While I have been in charge of a research project for the past five hundred years, Satan Herself has requested my personal attention to this matter. As I have not been fully briefed on the situation, I will need the particulars, both of the conditions and the context in order to resolve your predicament.

Azoked, Librarian

Okay, Azoked, how about let’s get started now. I hit Reply and typed out the words, hit Send, and then went on to my friends’ page.

I’d barely read the very first post (Melanie, one of Eros’s clan, was taking a vacation in Corfu and wanted shopping and packing advice—I didn’t even have time to tell her that Barneys had just gotten in some great beachwear—when I smelled a sharp strike of sulfur. I turned and there was an elegant Bastform demon librarian plugging the power supply for her Thinkpad into my socket.

I was suddenly grateful that I’d been sitting on the sofa in the living room, fully dressed. Thank all Hell and the engineers for wireless connections, though usually I felt that way when I was online in bed, wearing an oversized Ozzy tee. (Okay, they’d been handouts all over Hell about twenty years ago, though really he never was one of us. Talk about a poseur! But he tickled Satan all the same and She made sure we all had that No Rest for the Wicked promo shirt—which by now had been washed to soft and cozy and which I sometimes like to wear in utter defiance of the entire world.)

After all, I have all the wonderful, beautiful things a girl could want. But sometimes I don’t want to feel like I have to be beautiful all the time. Sometimes I just want to curl up in a soft XXL tee shirt that’s been through the wash for twenty years and eat ravioli and Oreos. Sometimes it is comfort over style, and I was insanely relieved that this librarian hadn’t caught me out. Because if there were a time that I really wanted comfort and normalcy and to forget the people who would hunt me and my friends down and destroy us, it was right then.

She was a Bastform, which means she looked rather like a four-foot-tall Siamese cat. This one was a blue point, which gave her the air of a stern librarian who was on the lookout to hush anyone who dared to talk. The (cat’s eye, naturally) reading glasses that hung around her neck on a beaded cord added to her air. Her silk robin’s-egg-blue robe looked like it came from the wardrobe of one of the Harry Potter movies, and it flowed around her elegantly elongated form as if she were Professor of Akashic at Hogwarts. Tree of life designs wandered around the collar and down the front rendered in raised silver embroidery and adorned with a scattering of pearls. Either she was high in the Library hierarchy or had been outfitted with some thought to my rank and reputation for elegance.

When I turned my attention to her, she waited for a long moment before acknowledging my presence with a slight nod.

That’s the problem with Bastform demons. They have the personality of cats along with the looks, which means that they think they are superior. And this one was a librarian, which meant she really did have some very specialized abilities. Damn.

“Welcome, Librarian,” I said formally and in Akkadian. “Your aid is most valuable and we are grateful.” I hate hate hate having to flatter and play humble, but if you want anything out of a Bastform you have no choice. And if you act like you’re equals they’ll make you wait forever.

She deigned to blink in acknowledgment and immediately took up the Thinkpad, which had booted and displayed a welcome screen that I’d never seen before. Pale blue just the shade of her robe, trees and vines in ghostly echos of pastels twined themselves through the usual log-in boxes. It was quite an elegant piece of programming, no doubt about it.

“I didn’t know you used the Internet in the Akashic,” I commented.

“Only for the first pass or so, to eliminate the most obvious dead ends. We’ve been working on going fully computerized for decades now.” Her tone was bored and just as superior as I had anticipated.

The Akashic record is the
Great Book of All Things.
All events, all Fate, everything a person has ever done or thought or tried and failed, all of it is recorded in his or her Akashic file. And not just people, either. No, everything that lives is in the Book. Every ant, every tree, every milkweed and luna moth and feral tabby cat, every tomato plant and pigeon is in the Book.

Which in itself is just a metaphor, since it’s not a book in any sense of the word at all. It’s more like a database, only it encompasses a magical space larger than New York and London and Tokyo combined. It is possibly the hugest thing in existence.

Magicians, human, Underworld or Upperworld, had to undergo years and years of training and privations to be accorded access. And once admitted, they had to study for years and years longer to learn how to locate the information they sought.

Those with particular talent learned to call upon the Demon Librarians, like Azoked, or the Angelic Librarians, who were simply out of reach for any of the Underworld.

I knew little about the Akashic other than the few courses offered in Advanced Demonic Skills. The Librarians, of either the Demonic or Angelic Hosts, were highly specialized professionals who were always in short supply. My last interaction had been before the use of electricity, let alone computers. So I ended up asking the only question that came immediately to my mind.

“Windows?”

Azoked sighed. “I prefer Oracle myself. The Angelics use it, of course. But—” She shrugged. “We support our own, you know.”

I rolled my eyes. But then I’m a Mac user, ever since the very first Apples came on the market. Maybe no one in Hell knew quite how devoted I was to my lightweight titanium Powerbook.

“Now, just a few preliminaries and I’ll start immediately. I’ll need names, of course, and all the contact information, and anything else you have. Also, some personal item of the search target does help us narrow things down far more quickly.”

I’d have to ask Desi if she had anything of Steve’s. A personal item, or even better, something that had been part of him—like a hair—would be best. I obediently gave the kitty demon all the information I possessed about Steve Balducci and Nathan Coleman. Which was very little indeed.

“But I don’t think I have anything of his,” I said, trying to remember if he’d left me anything. Oh, right, he’d given me his card. I dragged out my Treo, input the information, and then handed the card over. “For all the good it will do. It’s not very personal.”

“Hmmmm.” The Librarian studied it and, miracle of miracles, actually appeared interested. “Well, we’ll see. It was on his body and in his hand for a while, though your emanations might have overridden the original information. I’ll have to see what I can do. And the other, this Steve Balducci?”

“Just a sec.” I hit Desi’s speed dial number in the Treo and prayed she’d pick up. Sometimes when she’s in a real funk she hides the phone or just lets it ring and then doesn’t retrieve the voice mail for days.